Television pictures showing American soldiers being interrogated and paraded in front of Iraqi cameras are among the most disturbing of the war so far.

Television pictures showing American soldiers being interrogated and paraded in front of Iraqi cameras are among the most disturbing of the war so far.

The scenes aroused disgust in Britain and the US and raised fears about the Iraqi treatment of prisoners of war. Kay Jordan looks at how the PoWs will be coping

Being at the mercy of the enemy must be the most terrifying ordeal anyone can endure.

Who can forget the pictures from the first Gulf War of former Tornado navigator John Nichol, from North Shields, and pilot John Peters, being paraded, bloodied and bowed, on TV by their Iraqi captors after their aircraft was shot down?

Like John Nichol, Stan Johnson has more insight than most into what the US PoWs must be feeling. He spent five years as a prisoner of the Germans in the Second World War and the 82-year-old, of Cowpen Estate, Blyth, says the disturbing images of the captured Americans brought the horrifying memories rushing back to him all these years later.

"You have to worry about what happens to them when they are not in front of the TV cameras," he says.

The PoWs will be living in a permanent state of fear, says Stan, who was captured in France on May 27, 1940. His years in prison camps in Poland were spent digging trenches, building roads and working on the railways and he and his fellow captives were constantly mistreated.

He endured enforced marches, from France to Poland initially and then, as the end of the war approached in 1945, from Poland to Germany, in front of the advancing Russians.

"From day to day we never knew where we'd have to go and I imagine it will be the same for them. We had a gun pointed at our heads for five years and there was always the risk of someone pulling the trigger.

"On the march to Germany, people were shot or hit with the butt of a rifle for not keeping up or straying from the column. The 1,200-mile journey took place from January until March and the ones who were shot were just left lying in the snow. I don't know if they were picked up later."

Stan is partially deaf due to an incident while in a PoW camp. He cut a hole in one of his boots as the leather had caused a sore on his ankle. He was asked why he had sabotaged good German boots and, before he could answer, he was struck a blow across his right ear with the heel of the boot by a German officer.

"I heard all the bells of St Mary's ringing and could not hear for some months to come. I was thrown in the bunker for 30 days as a punishment and lived just on bread every three days and bowl of soup every two days."

The PoWs' thoughts will be of home and their families, says Stan, and the will to survive, coupled with the hope that their nightmare will soon end, will keep them going.

"They are luckier than us in that this war is probably going to be very short in comparison with the Second World War but at least we had lots of mates around us and if someone was down there was always somebody to cheer you up. There are very few of these PoWs so they will isolated, probably in cells."

Unlike Stan and his colleagues more than 60 years ago, the US PoWs will probably have been extensively trained to deal with the situation. Dr Joan Harvey, chartered psychologist at Newcastle University, says this will prove invaluable.

"They will have to handle fear, terrible conditions and the uncertainty of not knowing whether they are going to be tortured, killed or just left to rot. There will be little or no stimulus for them and they face a lot of inactivity.

"They will probably have had some training in coping strategies to deal with their situation on a mental and physical level. If they have done meditation and yoga that could help them enormously. They might concentrate their mind for long periods on something, such as what is going on at home, and they might set up an exercise regime, even if it's just jogging on the spot."

Paul Rees served as a Royal Marine for 21 years and is now the managing director of Centurion, a company which provides training for war correspondents to help them survive at the frontline.

He learned survival rules for hostages and the rules now form a major part of Centurion's courses.

"The shock of capture is an immense psychological problem, even for the most hardened troops," he says. "Military training and hostile environment training involves a kidnapping exercise to demonstrate the natural emotions and reactions you feel.

"Suddenly finding yourself taken hostage gives rise to some of the most extreme emotions and complex psychological reactions. The captors will try to prolong this but, because soldiers understand what methods will be used, they'll be better able to resist them."

Learning to stifle their emotions is a difficult but essential task for prisoners of war, explains Rees. "Military personnel are taught to become a nonentity, or what they call `the grey person'," he says. "If they attract attention to themselves they risk being the first person killed, so they must be polite, not talk unless spoken to, and not show aggression, even though they might hate what's happening to them."

After the initial fear, confusion and numbness of the capture and intimidation, hostages typically endure boredom and despair.

"These are the two worst psychological problems of long-term captives. Too much thinking about the difficulties of the situation can make your imagination an enemy and result in excessive worry, guilt, mistrust, loneliness and fear. Soldiers are taught to have a positive attitude and retain their pride so will be trying to exercise their memory and think pleasant thoughts.

"One pilot captured in Vietnam coped by building a hotel in his head," continues Rees. "He designed the building, picked the furnishings, chose the menu, hired the staff. That's what got him through. Other people re-read books, compose stories or even poetry."

Having the will to live is also essential to surviving captivity. "Many people get the will to live from thoughts of their family and you'd be amazed at how many people draw strength from religion, even if they weren't particularly religious before," concludes Rees.

The experiences of hostages such as Terry Waite and John McCarthy and John Nichol and John Peters have helped teach the military how PoWs should cope.

Dr John Potter, the former visiting professor at the Centre for Leadership at Exeter University, runs a private psychology practice in Dartmouth, Devon. He worked with the intelligence corps at Sandhurst for eight years and trained military personnel in interrogation skills and resistance.

Potter believes the hostages' raw fear will have subsided and they will now draw on military training to cope with the psychological rigours of captivity.

"US and British soldiers know that, in captivity, all they can say is their name, rank, number and date of birth, which helps them cope with the basic human need to talk when in a strange situation.

"They know the longer they are held hostage the less value they become to the captors because any military information they might have known will be out of date. So they'll be trying to keep their heads down and get through it for as long as they can."

The raw emotions of captivity

These are the emotions experienced by PoWs, according to Centurion's war training handbook.

After minutes to hours: Denial, numbness, a sense of disbelief and intimidation.

Hours to days: Extremely wary, acutely vigilant and attentive to small details.

Days to weeks: Compliance and a more sophisticated, flexible resistance posture.

Weeks to months: Isolation or solitary confinement proves difficult to handle and signs of depression and despair may appear.

Veterans are party guests

Ex-German and Japanese PoWs in the region are being invited to a Northumberland garden party this summer.

Brian and Shirley Burnie annually hold a party for the region's hospices in the grounds of their home, Doxford Hall, near Alnwick. They have decided to make it a joint event this year by inviting the PoWs.